Desert Schools Federal Credit Union in Phoenix expects to cut costs significantly by running VMware Inc.'s virtualization software on two two-way, dual-core Opteron-based blade servers, which were installed last week, said Doug Baer, a systems engineer at the firm. Baer said the new systems are expected to handle the workload that is running on the five two-way, single-core Xeon machines they are replacing.

"I can hardly imagine buying another server," said Baer, crediting the virtualization software from EMC Corp.'s VMware subsidiary. "Once you build your virtual infrastructure, you are definitely slowing down your server proliferation."

John Weeks, IT manager at Enumclaw Insurance Group in Enumclaw, Wash., wants to enhance his virtualized environment by adding systems running dual-core Intel chips with the vendor's Virtualization Technology (VT).

Enumclaw currently runs VMware on 40 Intel-based servers, and Weeks said he thinks that running the software on systems incorporating VT would improve virtualization performance significantly.

VT has been included in Intel's Xeon MP chip, formerly code-named Paxville, since last year, but it had been disabled. Intel began allowing users to enable it last week.